


I Hate That Color on You

by MonsterDib



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Brendol Hux's A+ Parenting, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV Armitage Hux, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 22:06:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19710385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsterDib/pseuds/MonsterDib
Summary: Soulmate Au where the color of your fingernails is a color that is important to your soulmateHux's nail's are green, a green so bright that is almost seems to glow, and he hates it. Good thing the First Order has a thing for gloves.





	I Hate That Color on You

**Author's Note:**

> I wouldn't really call this a fic, so much as a really in depth idea that would not leave me alone.
> 
> No beta, but I did try, like a moderate amount. No promises, but hopefully there are no tense fuck ups

Armitage Hux's nails were a normal color when he was born, but are now a neon green that almost seems to glow. They turned this color somewhere in his seventh standard year. He can't remember what day, just that one day his nails were normal and then the next they were green.   
  
As a young boy living with his mother, Armitage didn't think anything of it. Sometimes he would get distracted by the color, but overall it didn't impact his life. It was when he began living with his father, that he began to hate the color of his nails, and attempted to hide his hands as much as physically possible.   
  
The color is unusual in the remnants of the Empire, as most bright colors are, but it's also the color associated with the Empire's greatest enemy, the Jedi. Hux had overheard stories, as a child, about the Jedi. They were thought of as magicians who were outdated even before Darth Vader's death.   
  
Because of the color association, Hux was thought of as a traitor, and his father was all too eager to remind him. The harsh words and physical violence followed him from home to school, with and increase in school violence when he took up classes at his father's Academy.   
  
Hux worked hard to eliminate the treatment he received and the people responsible. Hiding his hands became a lot easier when he started wearing gloves. No one made comment of his gloves, even if he was a bit young to wear them as often as he did. If anyone was foolish enough to make a comment, they were often the students that didn't make it through the academy's cut throat training exercises. They were expected to die for the First Order, after all, Hux just helped a few of them along.   
  
Living in a world with soulmates, one could not avoid the topic all together. Hux had become a professional at dodging such questions by the time he was a lieutenant. But if by some chance someone did know the color of his nails, Hux would site the Death Star.   
  
From all eye witness accounts, the beam that destroyed Alderaan was green in color. It is the victories of the Empire that are most important to Hux's soulmate. (That's what Hux tells himself and he tries his hardest to believe it, but deep down he knows it's not true)  
  
\---------   
  
Hux continues his life avoiding all things pertaining to soulmates. So well, in fact, that some of the younger officers don't believe he has one. This rumor is by far one of his most and least favorites. The fact that he feels conflicted on the subject makes him upset because he learned the hard way that soulmates are a hindrance.   
  
Hux has seen strong men and women made weak by their connections, and the one thing Hux hates more than soulmates is weakness.  
  
\--------  
  
Kylo ren has black nails. Hux finds this out at some point, just like he sees the man's face. It happens in an instance where something more important is happening and it doesn't really register until much later.   
  
Black isn't an unusual color as everyone's nails turn black when their soulmate dies, but it is unusual in one so young, if Ren's face is any indication of his age. Ren could paint them, like some do, but people don't usually paint their nails black. People usually paint their nails because they are black, or to cover up a color from a scorned soulmate.   
  
Hux puzzles for a few moments, but in the end, he puts it from his mind. He doesn't care (except sometimes it sort of feels like he does) and he continues to not care until Starkiller is imploding beneath him.  
  
He starts to care because an injured Kylo Ren is is fighting for his life only a few centimeters from where Hux sits. Kylo is laid across the seats of the shuttle that is taking them off planet. His only movement being that of his shallow breaths and the occasional rock from the force of the explosions that are happening around them.   
  
Hux realizes as he removes Ren's gloves to check for further injuries, because they're covered in blood, so much blood, that Ren's nails are not black, but blue. An impossibly dark blue. The blue of an ocean under a thunderstorm. An ocean that holds the remains of his childhood. But he doesn't have time to dwell on memories because his life work is exploding and he has a mission.   
  
He forgets about the color of Ren's nails in the days that follow. It feels almost like a dream, or more accurately a nightmare. The explosions with their reds are oranges. The color, but no. There are more important things to worry about, so he forgets. He _makes_ himself forget. Makes himself forget that dark impossible blue against deathly pale skin and the feeling that ran through him at the sight of Ren's blood in the snow.  
  
But he can't forget. Its because that color isn't just a color, it's the wind. The wind that sometimes sounds like a women's cries. It's when Hux finally has a chance to catch a breath, in the few seconds that he can manage, that the wind starts up, and that stupid color floods his mind. He had put that color, that memory in his past, but it's now freshly seared into his mind. Filling in any gaps it can find.  
  
It's the color that he sees as he is thrown around by Snoke. It's the color he sees and the sound he hears when he is choked by Ren and thrown against a wall.  
  
It's that color he is thinking about, and that awful sound that is ringing in his ears, when the door to his fresher slides open as he tends to his wounds.   
  
He meets the new Supreme Leader's eyes in the mirror, or at least he means to, but Ren's eyes aren't anywhere near looking at his face. No, they're fixated on the bruises on his side, or rather, Hux notes, his hands that are frozen in place where he had been applying bacta.   
  
There's no way he can pass the color off to Ren, not the Jedi killer.   
  
Hux's eyes drift to Ren's hands and they're for some reason un gloved and he's hit by that color again. He lifts his gaze to meet Kylo's and it's in that moment he knows.   
  
Hux can't remember how it happens, but they end up laying on their backs on Hux's bed, their shoulders touching.   
  
\--------  
  
Kylo tells of a young boy named Ben. A boy whose favorite person, outside his parents, was his uncle Luke. An uncle who owned and used a green lightsaber. He grabs one of Hux's hands in his own larger ones at this point, and goes on the explain how excited Ben was to learn from his uncle. How the boy's excitement lasted until he learned he had to leave his parents behind. Had to leave his entire life behind.   
  
The longer the boy was away from his life, and the less he heard from his parents, the more he started to hate that color- that shade of green. The green that is uncle used to literally wave in his face. But then he was reborn. And it was that green that rebirthed him. That color is what killed Ben solo, and brought about Kylo Ren.  
  
Kylo is quiet for a second before he turns onto his to face Hux, but Hux can't do the same. He can't face this situation just yet, and it doesn't matter because Kylo is still holding his hand. Only now, Kylo has his hand between both of his own and seems to be mesmerized by the color, gently stroking his thumbs against the back of his hand.   
  
It's a minute or two of the quiet and gentle touching before Kylo continues. Hux isn't surprised by what he says, but doesn't want to except it.   
  
Kylo tells him that his nails weren't always their current blue. They were yellow, the color of blonde hair in sunshine. Every so often they would change to a different color, no less bright or vivid, but it would only last for about a month before it changed back. He says he doesn't remember this, but it was something Ben Solo's parents would tell him often.   
  
Kylo goes quiet again and Hux can feel his gaze on the side of his face. It soft, just like Kylo's touch on the back of Hux's hand. It's with great effort and a large sigh that Hux rolls to face Kylo, rearranging their hands so Hux is now holding Kylo's. Hux takes in Kylo's expression for a second before he closes his eyes and tells Kylo about his mother.  
  
\--------  
  
Hux, Armitage at the time, was raised by his mother, and he is sure she had her flaws, but all he remembers is that she was beautiful and kind and he loved her more than anything in the world.   
  
She worked in a kitchen, but loved the outdoors and took every opportunity to fo so. On rainy days, which was most days on Arkanis, Armitage could always find his mother under the covering of the open air stage that was on the grounds, or walking along the sidewalks with a delivery basket in one hand and an umbrella in another. Whenever she saw him racing towards her to get out from the rain, she would hold out her hand. They would hold hands for a moment just listening to the sound of the rain before she would gently steer Armitage by his hand back towards the house, making comments about how the sky looked to be clearing up.   
  
When the weather was actually decent, however, she would excitedly take Armitage, once again by the hand, and lead him into the house gardens.   
  
His mother always encouraged him to play, but he found more enjoyment in sitting in the grass beside his mother. He found comfort and enjoyment as he listened to her animated voice as she spoke to him and taught him about the various plants that she tended to. The sun would shine through her hair, making the the most beautiful yellow, it was almost as if it was glowing. Hux recalls to Kylo how he often caught himself staring up at her wishing his hair was the same color.   
  
It was when he was eight that his father came for him. He didn't find out until later that it was because Brendol Hux was nearly infertile. It was by some miracle that Hux had been conceived. A miracle of the universe some could say, but not for Armitage and certainly not for his mother. Brendol Hux needed an heir, and the fact that Armitage's mother was not his wife was the universe's fault.   
  
Which is all a very round about way of saying Brendol Hux came for Armitage, but Armitage's mother would not give her son up willingly.  
  
Hux remembers being held back much to harshly, he had the bruises for at least a week and a half, as his mother was forcibly dragged, carried, and beaten to the cliff that marked the edge of the property. He remembers the feel of the rain and the howling of the wind. He remembers his mother's hair whipping around her tear streaked face of utter pain. He remembers, and he really wishes he couldn't, the sudden darkness that overtook his world. The wind seemed to disappear and all he could hear was his mother's final scream as she was thrown over the cliff. Her scream seemed to drag on forever, but in no time at all the wind had overtaken his ears once more.   
  
By the time he had been released and ran on stumbling feet to the edge of the cliff, all he could see was blue. The darkest blue he had ever seen, and it felt like was swallowing him whole, just like his mother.   
  
It was with a hand on the back of his neck, and tears in his eyes that he was taken away and he was molded into Hux.   
  
\--------  
  
Hux opens his eyes when he's done, causing tears to awkwardly fall over the bridge of his nose. He releases Kylo's hands to wipe them away, but Kylo beats him to it. His touch is just a gentle as it was on the back of his hands, and Hux struggles to meet Kylo's eyes after sharing the darkest part of him. When their eyes do meet, Hux starts crying with everything he has, and Kylo pulls him into an embrace. Nothing is said, and Hux's everything still hurts, but for now this is fine.   
  
They will eventually have a conversation about Kylo's recent treatment of him, but that is the future. They've just shared their respective pasts with each other, and now, in the present, Hux finds comfort in Kylo's embrace and catches himself thinking that he wouldn't be surprised if Kylo's nail color would soon match the of his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Oooooop there it is lol 
> 
> Let me know what you think?


End file.
